Addgene Opens Its First International Office Located in Europe
June 10, 2014
Cambridge, MA - Addgene, the nonprofit plasmid repository, today announces it has opened its first international office. Located just outside of London, UK, the new office is being hosted by LGC and will focus on providing customer support and scientific outreach to European scientists and research institutions. The new office will work in concert with Addgene’s United States headquarters.
“LGC has a strong history of supporting scientists in Europe,” says John Ball, EMEA Sales Director of LGC’s Standards division. “We’re looking forward to sharing our globally-renowned expertise and working with Addgene on this joint initiative.”
The need for this new office, Addgene’s second location, marks the significant growth of the company over its 10 years of operation. Addgene currently serves over 80,000 scientists in 78 countries and has shipped over 400,000 plasmids to date. The repository stores and distributes an extensive library of more than 30,000 plasmids, small pieces of DNA used in life science labs to study the function of various genes. These plasmids have been contributed by more than 1,900 scientists from 516 institutions around the world.
Addgene ensures that plasmids and their associated data can be easily accessed and used by academic scientists to advance research and discovery in a range of disciplines, including cancer, heart disease, and neurodegenerative disorders. “Science and biomedical research are extremely collaborative and we see these collaborations rapidly growing and extending across borders,” says Joanne Kamens, Executive Director of Addgene. “To best serve the scientific community, it is important that Addgene grow internationally as well. Our new team and office in London will help us achieve this goal.”
John Ball continued, “We are delighted to be working with Addgene to help facilitate access for European scientists to their leading plasmid repository. This is a natural extension to our existing activities as Europe’s leading producer and distributor of reference materials and proficiency testing schemes and enhances our offering for the research community.”
Research efforts in the UK, France, Germany, and other European countries continue to grow, increasing the demand for improved access to quality reagents. Since 2004, Addgene has shipped over 75,000 plasmids to European scientists. This represents approximately 20% of the plasmids shipped from Addgene’s Cambridge, MA-based headquarters. Though Addgene will continue shipping reagents from its US location, the goal of the new office is to provide enhanced customer service by offering improved time-zone access, additional language capabilities, and answers to Europe-specific shipment questions.
“Scientists in Europe are already benefiting from Addgene’s services,” says Tom Ellis, Ph.D. , researcher at Imperial College London and member of Addgene’s Scientific Advisory Board. “Hopefully, the opening of the new office will introduce more scientists to the repository and encourage them to take the next step – sharing their own reagents with others through Addgene.”